Tyko

Going one step further...short of running a lot of formulas, how would I set up a flyby rendezvous? I'm thinking I could get the Lander in an orbit with it's PE exactly matching the PE of the Mothership. Then I'd just time warp until the Mothership is a bit further than one Lander orbital period away from the joint PE and adjust the Lander's final orbit so it's back at the PE at the same time the Mothership arrives. It all seems pretty iffy though...

That's a very cool looking base! Took me a second to realize you'd built a "deck" on top for the whole thing. A deck like that deserves a hot tub and a BBQ grill

This reference is so great. It makes it so much easier to visualize travel in the game. Thanks!

Thanks, this totally makes sense I think the trade-off though is the "Risk" part. If the Lander doesn't have supplies to wait (possibly years) for another encounter with the Mothership on flyby, then having the Mothership drop into at least an eccentric orbit gives the Lander a possibility of a second encounter. I've gotten competent at rendezvous between two craft in similar orbits. I can usually get an encounter within one orbital rotation. In the case of a flyby I don't have the luxury of similar orbits or a full rotation to play with. I have to nail it on one try.

after you've done it once, celebrate because it's one of the toughest things to get right...then do it again and again until you no longer find it interesting. After that you may choose MJ, or you might find it so easy you don't have to use MJ. It's like a perfect baseball or golf swing. Do Baseball or Golf players quit playing once they've mastered it? When you do it right it's a great feeling because you're doing something easily that only a handful of people on the whole planet can do

You're not an idiot...it's actually really tough to visualize in your head what's going on. The key thing is to understand that you have to be in "Target Mode" on the navball and that the Retrograde Marker is telling you which way to burn to slow your relative velocity to 0. So you get close (within a few kilometers), set your Target, point your ship to the Retrograde marker and then burn until your speed is 0. After that, you can point your ship at the pink target marker and slowly move closer...it's a pain to figure out, but really worth it. Once you've watch MJ do it a few times, it's really rewarding to go back and do it manually. If you need more help, ask.

Thanks for the reply! Understood that different vehicles pay for it...the part I'm trying to work out is whether or not there's really a difference in the total DV paid or whether it's a matter of which vessel pays for it. That's why I separated the point about DV from the point about fuel expenditure. I'm trying to figure out conceptually what's going on.

I'm trying to wrap my head around flyby rendezvous - like the one portrayed in the Martian - where a small, light lander accelerates to rendezvous with a big heavy mothership on a flyby encounter. I'm going to lay out my thoughts so far, but would appreciate it if the more knowledgeable orbital mechanics people would help me out. Three options (there are many variations in between, but these three seem to capture the spectrum of possibilities) Option 1) Mothership doesn't slow down, Lander accelerates to meet it, achieves rendezvous, Mothership continues on its path Option 2) Mothership decelerates into a highly eccentric orbit, Lander achieves rendezvous, Mothership accelerates, breaks orbit on its outbound path Option 3) Mothership decelerates into a circular orbit, Lander achieves rendezvous, Mothership accelerates, breaks orbit on its outbound path So, what are the tradeoffs? Here's where I need some help DeltaV Budget - no difference - It seems like all three options would involve the same or close to the same DV expenditure. Whether the Mothership burns to slow/accelerate or the Lander does all the acceleration, I'm thinking that the DV budget is the same. Fuel expenditure - is higher in 2 and MUCH higher in 3 because you're changing velocity on the much heavier Mothership. Risk Level - Option 1 is the riskiest, while option 3 is the least risky because with 1 you only have one shot. If you miss the rendezvous, you don't have a second chance until the Mothership swings by for another encounter potentially years later. With 2 or 3, the Mothership will be returning fairly quickly, so you'll have multiple chances to achieve rendezvous. Thanks for responding!

I stand corrected, Sir. I'm still living in a PC only world and wasn't considering our brothers and sisters on consoles... That said, I still stand by the idea that, IMHO, the Devs are still better serving the community fixing bugs and optimizing the game. Console players have no in-game way of calculating DeltaV (KER/MJ) or any way of doing precise maneuver plotting...while a few brave souls will do the math, what percentage of players are going to do the math externally to plan a Sarnus voyage versus what percentage of players would benefit from less bugs and optimized code? From a marketing/sales perspective, what's going to sell more copies of the game? Smoother, more bug free play or an option to explore more planets that most players won't hit until after 100+ hours of play?

Mods that use MM don't require you to be a programmer. You just install the mod and it works. Zero coding is required on your part. have you ever tried one?

EXACTLY....if the devs have X hours to devote to improving the planetary system I'd much rather see those hours devoted to improving biomes or colonization, etc rather than importing OPM or any planetary mod into Stock.

Just download OPM...why ask Squad devs to take time away from bug fixes / core optimization to do something that you can already do perfectly well with OPM?

Avoid the Kraken by avoiding scene changes with pipes attached. Most Kraken attacks happen when physics is loading. I land my tanker, connect the pipe, do the fuel transfer and then disconnect the pipe all in one session. Doing this avoids having physics reload.

I just saw this too! there's a whole thread going about orbital spacedocks that would enable refits/upgrades. This mod does exactly what we are talking about!!

can you add a link to the mod you're working on?

Is the OP asking for a flight computer connected with very powerful RCS to emulate "star wars" or "biplane" style flight or is this a request to actually break the physics system to enable "un-realistic" flight models? If you're not breaking the physics model, then it would quickly become apparent why "real" spacecraft won't fly like atmospheric craft do - it's just crazy DeltaV hungry. IMHO, most movies use "star wars" style flight models because they made for a movie experience that non-technical viewers would understand. There are many games out there that let you fly spacecraft like atmospheric aircraft. One of the reasons I went to KSP was that I wanted to learn how to fly "real" spacecraft and because of that I'd be opposed to anything that breaks the physics model.

Given how difficult and risky a docking landing is (without F5/F9 you're risking all your equipment and maybe lives) I'm just using KAS and its pipe connectors. You have a port on each vessel and a kerbal can create a pipe connection. Land near your mining rig, run a pipe between the two, transfer your fuel, disconnect the pipe. It feels more "realistic" and your landing accuracy only has to be in meters rather than near-perfect.

If you're plotting a planet or moon encounter just get yourself ANY kind of encounter, then left-click on the planet/moon and select Focus View. Now you can zoom in on the target body and see exactly where your encounter path is. If you're open to mods, Precise Maneuver (amongst other things) will map keyboard buttons to the six directional arrows on the Maneuver Node. Using those 6 buttons you can tweak your Node while your in a close-up view of your planet/moon. Using this method, it's really easy to nail precise flybys or put yourself in an exact orbit.

I did some initial porkchop plots and it was around 30Km/s to do a ~150 day transit to Jool. Depended on relative positions of the two planets of course. I can refine the scenario my first post was more to discover if someone had already done this since I've only been playing since 1.1 release

Toggle = turn on and off = quickly enable or disable the rotational thrust from RCS Sure, because I have fuel tankers that mostly work just fine using Reaction Wheels for rotation and RCS for translation, but when they are topped off with fuel they handle like cows. so when I can take the time to rotate slowly I want to save RCS fuel and when I'm doing final docking I want to toggle RCS rotation thrust on so I can have better control...For that matter, any heavier vessel can rotate on RWs when there's time, but there are times when you need quicker more precise rotation and it would be valuable to only use RCS fuel during those times when you really need faster response Already have one...thanks for the offer

I was thinking about this earlier actually. You can already turn ore into parts with Extraplanetary Launch Pads. The goal we are working on here is the "assembly" after launch part. If you had a mod that let you build parts from ore, you could still launch those parts up to the spacedock

I was thinking about a speed run to Jool challenge. Here's the scenario I'm considering: Jebediah and Valentina are on a long term research mission in Jool orbit when a medical emergency happens. They must get back to Kerbin within 1 year, and there aren't any ships in a position to get them home in time. A 2 Kerbal medical team has to fly out and all 4 of them fly back. Only Jeb and Val have to land for the mission to be complete. A call goes out for the cheapest, fastest mission to rescue our intrepid heroes. The Challenge: design and fly a craft from Kerbin KSC, achieve a 1000x1000Km orbit above Jool, return to Kerbin and land a 2 person pod. Waypoints Starting point: at KSC Orbit Jool in 1000x1000Km orbit (presumably to rendezvous with Jeb & Val, but the actual transfer is assumed and not part of the challenge) Return and safely touch down on Kerbin Payload - Passenger space for 8 - 4 seats are occupied and only 2 seats have to touch down at Kerbin. The other 4 represent extra living space and medical gear for a multi-month journey. Time - no more than one year from first launch until return capsule touches down Launch and assembly - this can be a single launch or multiple launches with assembly in orbit. Regardless of how you design the mission, the clock and budget count starts with the first launch and must include all assets used (fuel tankers, etc) Calendar - for consistency, the calendar starts on year 1, day 1 of the standard game calendar This will ensure all players are starting with the same planetary alignments We could change this as long as everyone starts at the same time. Mods - Vanilla with UI mods allowed no mods allowed that add or modify parts or their functions No mods that change the planets, their position etc You can use UI/functionality mods - transfer window planner, MJ, KER, etc Am I missing anything here? I want it to be fair for everyone. Scoring: Not sure...A couple of ideas: Lowest cost? - This seems like a good idea because it will keep some focus on efficiency rather than just kerballing together moar boosters Fastest trip? - also be fun to see how fast someone could do it regardless of cost Any thoughts? Has this been tried before? Looking at transfer window planner I think the DeltaV budget would be well North of 50Km/s. Is it possible?

I was hoping I could toggle RCS roll/yaw/pitch with an action group, but the options don't even appear in the options when I set up a group. Is there a secret here or is it just not an option?

some really cool thoughts here. The VAB still offers all the the placement tools and if you just create a VAB in space, most of the coding is already in place without writing a whole bunch of new systems. the overly simplistic view but: you'd need a way for an existing craft to be imported back into the VAB environment - once in there, the VAB already has everything else a part, or series of parts that you have to orbit to create the "import node" that provides the ability to import the craft into the orbital VAB this would be your "spacedock" and the capacity of the spacedock in parts / tonnage (whichever is easier) would be dictated by how big your spacedock was. Maybe each spacedock component accommodates 10 tons/20 parts (or whatever, I'm just throwing out numbers). If you want to work on a 100 ton ship, you need to launch and assemble 10 of those spacedock parts. Spacedock parts would require power, crew etc. - these are all mechanics built into the game already I'm proposing this because it seems like a fairly straightforward thing to create if you can just reuse all the VAB functionality. And, why wouldn't it be cool to bring a ship in and upgrade it after long mission? This happens IRL to naval vessels and I would expect that we'd do it IRL in space in the future.

The benefits of the orbital workshop are the precise placement, access to tools like CoM, CoT and RCS (if using the mod). Also though, the ability to disassemble is really valuable. There's no current way to swap out a module that's not on the "outside" of your craft. Here are a couple of examples of things you could do in a workshop that would be really tough if not impossible with KIS or some sort of enhanced docking: You get nuclear tech and want to upgrade your ship from chemical to nuke. change the tanks storage from LFO to LF only pull the old chem engines and attach the nukes. You're probe tech increases and you want to upgrade a probe with a more advanced probe core - these are often buried in the stack and it would be a real pain to remove and add back each piece above it in the stack.